Although he did not specify what this might entail, it could indicate his desire to increase ministerial involvement in the work of anti-terror agencies.

He confirmed his long-awaited review of counter-terrorism had now been completed and handed to Prime Minister Tony Blair.

It was unclear whether Mr Reid's proposals would involve a reorganisation of MI5 and MI6, although a merger was thought unlikely.

The security services have been criticised in the past for not working together as closely as they should, and Mr Reid suggested the reaction to terrorism needed to be "seamless".

He told MPs: "This is now a serious threat. It no longer is easily divided into foreign affairs, defence or domestic affairs.

"It therefore needs a seamless, integrated, driven, politically overseen counter-terrorism strategy which places at its heart the recognition that above all this is a battle for ideas and values."

He added: "Some of what I've put to the Prime Minister goes way beyond legislation."

The issue of how long terror suspects can be detained before charge led to Mr Blair's first Commons defeat in November last year, when original proposals for a 90-day maximum were defeated.

Mr Reid said he would consider extending beyond 28 days if he was provided with a "factually-based case" and measures which would reassure Parliament that it would not be used "arbitrarily".

"That case has not yet been put to me," he told the Commons all-party Home Affairs Select Committee.

"That is where I stand. That is why I have an open mind about it.

"That is why no one should assume that a particular piece of legislation should be brought to the House."

David Winnick MP asked whether, if there was no evidence to support extending beyond 28 days, the House of Commons had been right to reject the Government's original plans.

Mr Reid said: "It is possible for something to be right at a given time even in the absence of evidence that later becomes available.

"It is not necessarily true that because the evidence of something did not exist at a particular time, for example the genome, that the genome did not exist.

"It is possible for something to exist and only to be discovered later."

Committee chairman John Denham MP then asked Mr Reid: "Have you been talking to Donald Rumsfeld?"

It was a reference to the former US defence secretary's infamous comment in 2002 about "known knowns", "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns".

The Home Secretary added that proposals on new terrorism measures could be expected in the New Year.

In another development to emerge in the committee's session, new figures showed only 129 of the 1,013 foreign national criminals who were freed without proper checks earlier this year have so far been deported.

The fiasco led to the sacking of former home secretary Charles Clarke in May.

The committee was told that in 216 cases officials had decided not to deport the criminals concerned, and in 745 they were pursuing removing them from the country.

In all, 43 have been deported in the last two months, the director-general of the Home Office's Immigration and Nationality Directorate said in a letter to the committee.

Mr Reid said police were still hunting about a third of the 745, adding: "They are minor offenders in the main."

Of four serious offenders who were on the run at the time of the last update in October, all but one had now been recaptured, he added.